THE DELIBERATE NON-LIE

The book also contains a chapter on PCBs [AtE Mar 85], a substance formerly used to cool large transformers, and the shoddy research leading to its ban. But it went to press before the EPA extended the ban from transformers used by the electric utilities to those used in public buildings. The EPA's news release of July 2, 1985, says "The rules are designed to protect the public from potential health risks posed by fires from transformers containing PCBs."

You have to read this statement twice to discover what prevents it from being a full-fledged, unambiguous lie; for PCB's are, and that is the reason for their use, incombustible. What the image-polishing EPAcrats mean is that when PCBs are heated in a fire due to other causes, they give rise to fumes that, after the customary mammoth overdoses, have led to cancer in guinea pigs; what they have left out is that the substitutes, such as mineral oil (explicitly suggested in the news release), will increase the risk of fire in schools, commercial buildings and other places. In the hands of lay journalists, for whom these news releases are intended, the statement becomes a deliberate, premeditated non-lie. But two can play this despicable game: it is also a non-lie to say "The new rules will reduce, and in many cases completely eliminate, the risk of cancer among school children, for they may be burned alive."